


Glass From Sandy Ground

by sadlikeknives



Category: Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-17 22:46:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13086996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/pseuds/sadlikeknives
Summary: I'm here to file my report as the vixen of the wolf packTell Patient Zero he can have his rib back.Once upon a time, Leah left Bran. Sixteen years later, Bran wants to talk.





	Glass From Sandy Ground

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WintryGooseball](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WintryGooseball/gifts).



> In the books, it's stated a couple of times that Leah hated Mercy from the very beginning, when she was just a baby and couldn't pull pranks or cause trouble yet. No one ever thinks to ask why. So for the purposes of this story, Bran insisting on keeping a certain baby coyote shifter in Aspen Creek and not bothering to even listen to her objections was the final straw for Leah, leading to their split. Sixteen years later, after Samuel tried to run off with a teenaged Mercy, a light bulb's gone on for Bran about what Leah was trying to warn him about.

Leah took a two week vacation in February every year, which wasn't that remarkable, considering she lived in Colorado. Lots of people cracked and headed somewhere tropical around that time of year. What was a bit unusual was that Leah always left at the busiest time of year for the company, when the big conventions happened at corporate headquarters, people coming in from all over North America for meetings only certain members of the staff were allowed access to, and then she did it again for a week in August when the second convention happened. Before said conventions, she'd meet the vice president of the company when he flew down from Montana, usually over dinner, and then she was gone, leaving everyone else scrambling without the woman who ran the company from day to day.

That was, of course, entirely on purpose. Leah hadn't been able to walk away from Bran Cornick and all his doings entirely when she'd left him—she knew too much about the business arm of things, and unfortunately agreed too much with his principles regarding werewolves as a whole. But she could sure as hell be elsewhere while he was in town, and generally was.

So it came as something of a nasty shock when she got home after her flight back from Miami and found a Porsche in the driveway and her ex-husband sitting on the swing on the front porch of her house. He got up and started down the steps as she approached, and she glared at him through the windshield as the garage door finished rising, then drove in and pushed the button again, hoping it would finish closing before he got to it, or maybe, she thought optimistically, crush him. Of course, his foot disrupted the safety laser and the damned thing obediently rose again, but it had been nice to hope for a few seconds.

"Fuck off, Bran," she said to the undisputed king of all the werewolves in North America, herself included if you wanted to get technical about it.

Bran actually smiled a little, just one corner of his mouth. "That's what I've needed, you know," he told her. "Someone to tell me when to fuck off." The vulgarity should have fit oddly in his mouth, but it didn't. Bran was always comfortable with his words.

"How unfortunate for both of us, then," Leah said as she opened the lift gate of her SUV, "considering I am infinitely better suited to that role than I ever was to being your wife, that I am well and truly done being what you _need_. Besides, I thought that was what Asil was for." She'd never met the man, seeing as he lived in Spain and all, but from the stories, that was the impression she'd gotten.

Something dimmed around Bran's eyes, and Leah hated that she could still read him so well. "Asil isn't doing so well," he said. "He may be coming to me, sooner or later."

"Oh," Leah said, because she knew the meaning of that euphemism. "I'm sorry to hear that." The other thing she'd gotten from the stories was that Asil was probably the closest thing Bran had to a friend—which was, of course, why he could tell him when he needed to fuck off.

"Death comes for all of us eventually," Bran said, trying to brush it off. "Even me, I suppose. Can I help you with that?" Leah, who could, like any werewolf, bench press her sofa, gave him a scornful look as she took her suitcase out of the car. "I'd like to talk to you, Leah. I thought we might go out for dinner. I could buy you a steak, maybe?"

"Anything you have to say to me I'm sure you don't want to say in front of other people," Leah told him, "and I'm not getting stuck in a private dining room with you. Come inside."

Susan greeted her enthusiastically when she opened the door, and she absently scratched behind her ears, telling her, "I missed you, too," but frowned. She wasn't supposed to be left loose in this part of the house. Her new dogsitter was clearly not up to the standards of her last one, but the last one had been a lone wolf like her, and unlike her he hadn't had the shield of the name 'Cornick,' so eventually the Denver Alpha had asked him to move along.

Women, of course, weren't technically supposed to be lone wolves, owing to typical werewolf paternalism, but she was hardly the only one, and accepting her into any pack in North America—or, hell, the world—brought with it all kinds of politics most Alphas didn't want to take on. She was happier by herself, anyway. She'd thought, now and again, about rounding up the other misfits like her and setting up some kind of Amazon pack—whether or not to invite the handful of gay wolves kicking around out there, she went back and forth on; on the one hand they were getting fucked over by the system as much as she'd ever been; on the other, they were still men, and fuck men—but the ruckus all the other packs would kick up wasn't worth it.

"You have a dog," Bran said, bemused, as Susan gave his shoes a good sniffing over.

"That's Susan," Leah said.

"Susan," Bran repeated. "Hello, Susan." After a moment, he realized, "C.S. Lewis?"

"Can suck it," Leah told him pleasantly. "Isn't that right, Susan?" Susan barked once, happy to be paid attention to. Susan was actually Leah's second dog, the first one, also named Susan because why mess with what worked, having died of old age three years before. She was a mutt of indeterminate parentage, eighty-five pounds of brindled ugly who had been on her last day when Leah showed up at the shelter, unwanted, even though she had the disposition of a marshmallow, just because she wasn't cute. Leah thought Susan was sort of her opposite, that way. She'd been great, except for that time she ate half the couch, which was why she wasn't supposed to be left wandering around loose. Leah didn't need a repeat of those vet bills. She led Bran into the living room, where the couch was mercifully still intact, and gestured for him to have a seat in the room's least comfortable chair as she settled in with Susan on the loveseat.

"I like your house," Bran said. "It suits you." It was small, but she didn't need a lot of house for one person plus Susan. It sat on a large parcel of land, which was the more important thing. Leah didn't respond, and eventually Bran ventured, "You swear more now."

"I don't have an asshole of a mate acting disapproving when my language isn't classy enough for him. Fancy that."

Bran dropped that line of conversation, as he often did those that were likely to go badly for him. "I assume Charles told you what Samuel did." Of course, this one wasn't likely to go well for him, either.

"He did." Charles was the only Cornick Leah still willingly talked to. She thought he'd always been her favorite, even though he'd never liked her at all, because he wasn't that much older than her and couldn't help what his father had made of him any more than she could. They met for dinner whenever he was in town, including the traditional meeting before she left on vacation and the Alphas' convocation started, so he could bring her up to date on werewolf political bullshit and she could bring him up to date on anything on the business side of things he might not be aware of—although Charles, being Charles, was usually already aware of most things.

"You can say, 'I told you so,' now."

"I don't need your permission, and I didn't tell you. You never gave me a chance." That had been what their final blowup had been about, the fact that he wouldn't even listen to her when she was telling him that bringing Mercy Thompson, were-coyote or whatever the hell she was, to Aspen Creek was going to end badly.

"You were trying to tell me."

"Badly. I can admit that."

"You were trying to avoid planting the seed in my mind," Bran said. "Weren't you?" Leah just shrugged. "I wouldn't have done what Samuel did."

"No," Leah agreed. "But maybe ten years down the line from now you would have looked at her instead of me, and she would've reminded you of Blue Jay Woman, and I would have been absolutely humiliated in the dust. It was better that I left when I did, than that. But that was never the real problem. That was the possibility that one of your broken men would do what Samuel did." And most of the werewolves in Aspen Creek were broken in one way or another, so there had been a lot of candidates. She sighed. "Samuel was not on my short list."

"I didn't realize he was that close to the edge," Bran admitted. "I didn't pay enough attention. And then he took it badly when I sent her away—but what else could I have done?"

"Sent Samuel away?" Leah suggested. She couldn't quite imagine Bran doing it, but it might have solved the problem.

"It may yet come to that. He's talking about going back to medical school. The distraction will be good for him. And, who knows, maybe he'll meet a nice girl there."

"Where did you send the coyote girl?"

"Her mother."

"You should have sent her there when Bryan and Evelyn died."

"I see that _now_ ," Bran said, irritated, and Leah smiled a smile that fell away quickly. "What?"

"This is the most civil conversation we've had in decades. And it's about your son being a pig who tried to maneuver a teenager into being his broodmare."

"I just—I want to say that's not who Samuel is, but obviously that is who Samuel is right now. He does love her. And he'd convinced himself she wasn't _that_ young. Not that that makes it any better, what he tried to do." Bran scrubbed one hand over his face, and he looked, for a moment, old.

"I have to admit," Leah said, trying not to smile, "I had my reservations about the Thompson girl, but I've become a big fan of her work. Especially in the medium of peanut butter."

Bran's mouth twitched. "I thought you'd call after that one. Everybody else did." Oh, she could imagine. Something in his look softened, and he asked, "How have you been, Leah?" He'd never loved her. She'd known going in that he would never love her, and she'd thought she was okay with that for a long time. But it seemed you couldn't live with someone for a hundred years without at least becoming a little fond of them. She hated it in herself; she thought Bran just felt sorry about it.

"Good," Leah said. "I've been good."

"You've been doing good work."

"I enjoy my role here," Leah said. "Speaking of, I assume you're still planning on bringing us out of the closet eventually."

"Eventually," Bran said. "Not this decade, but maybe in the next one. The genome mapping they're doing makes me more nervous all the time. Why?"

"I've been thinking about the political situation. I personally oversee the division that manages a lot of the lobbying, you know." Bran nodded. "So far most of our efforts have been wilderness preservation and reintroduction of wolf packs. Penny ante cover-up efforts that aren't going to matter once we're out," although she supposed they'd appreciate still having some wilderness to run around in. "Those don't pivot well to convincing the humans werewolves should have rights. I think we need to make some changes."

"I'm listening."

 _There's a first,_ Leah thought, but she said, "I think we need to start throwing money at pro-fae politicians. They're the ones more likely to be pro-werewolf, once they know there _are_ werewolves, and if they decide they aren't pro-werewolf we can offer to withdraw our support when they're up for reelection, see if that makes them dance a little better. I also think we should consider having some people who already know about werewolves—not actual werewolves, yet, mind you—start inserting themselves in politics in small ways. Just get people on school boards and city councils, and then they're seeds that we can grow while we still have time."

Bran was nodding along. "That makes sense. People who will already be inside the structure who can step forward as loud voices for werewolves."

"Exactly. You also, speaking of those pro-fae politicians we're going to start oiling, need to consider who's going to liaise with them and eventually smile nicely with a lot of teeth and say, 'By the way, we're hoping you'll support werewolf rights.' And then possibly be our face in Washington. I would have said Samuel was perfect for the job—he has your charm—before I knew how fragile he is. Charles obviously can't do it."

"And you don't have the temper for it. I'll have to think about it. If you have any candidates in mind, let me know."

Leah nodded. "Once Samuel was off the table, I was thinking maybe someone younger might be a good call, so when things blow up, if that person does wind up a public figure, the press won't be able to dig out the immortality thing so fast. But I don't have any particular ideas yet." Then she switched gears and asked, "How have _you_ been?" She'd gotten a glimpse of the beast that lived inside Bran Cornick's head through their bond now and again, the thing he swore being bound to her made quieter. Even understanding as she had that she wasn't special, that any mating bond would have done just as well, knowing she was one of the chains on that monster had kept Leah in Aspen Creek for a long, long time, until enough was enough. She was glad she'd left, but she'd worried—not about Bran, but about the monster in his head.

"It was bad at first," Bran admitted. Leah could believe that. It had been bad enough for her, the blowback of snapping that bond, and she wasn't Bran. Everyone had warned her it would be bad, that you didn't break a mating bond unless you were _really, really sure_. Well, Leah had been sure, and she'd paid for it, but she wasn't the least bit sorry she'd done it. "I got through it, obviously."

"Obviously," Leah agreed. "Or we'd all be dead."

"Well," Bran said. "Probably not _all_ of you."

"That's right. You didn't kill Samuel the first time."

"That was what you were banking on, wasn't it?" 

Leah shrugged. "I didn't really plan that far ahead, honestly. I just decided I was done. Why are you here, really? Just to see how I'm doing?"

Bran looked rueful, almost sad. "I thought maybe it had been long enough we could talk. And I wanted to tell you you were right. I thought you'd like that part. Sure I can't interest you in that steak?"

She could buy her own steak. "Get out of my house, Bran."

It was, in its way, a test. No dominant werewolf liked to be ordered around, and Bran was the most dominant werewolf in the world. He could have snarled at her not to talk to him like that. But instead, Bran said very softly, "All right," and stood up. He passed, but Leah still wasn't happy about it. Soft-spoken, harmless Bran: just another mask. She got up and showed him to the door, where he presented her with a business card. "I have an email address now and everything," he said.

"I'd rather talk to Charles," she told him, but she took the card. You never knew what the future held. She waited until she heard the Porsche start up and drive away before she told Susan, "Thank God that's over." Susan barked agreement. "If he shows up here again you have my permission to bite him," she told the dog, mostly because Susan didn't understand English and would never actually bite anyone, anyway.

It occurred to her that she should ask Charles how the Thompson girl was set up for a college fund. There might have been some inheritance from Bryan and Evelyn, or there might not, and who knew how her mother was doing these days. Leah had taken all the jewelry Bran had tried to buy her happiness with over the years with her when she left Aspen Creek, and she had never had any use for most of it. Perhaps a few of the baubles could fund some sort of scholarship fund for young women fucked over by the Cornick family, rather than collecting dust in a safety deposit box. But first, she was going to enjoy the peace and quiet of her own house for an evening, watch _House Hunters_ on the couch with Susan, and maybe order Chinese for dinner, since she didn't have any groceries in the house. As plans went, she thought that sounded pretty much perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary from "Good Grief" and "Fire Drills" by Dessa.


End file.
